Sermon Tone Analysis

*The Goal of our Destiny*

*Ephesians 1:4-6*

*May 13, 2007*

 

“Call on me.

And I will answer you and show you great and mighty things which you do not know.”

These words from Jeremiah say it all, don’t they?

You want to know the God who chose you to be His child, don’t you?

Call on Him and He will answer you and He will show you great and mighty things which you do not know!

Let’s pray: Lord, God of Israel, we call on you now.

Open our ears to hear truths you want to speak into our lives this morning, truths found in the book Paul wrote to the Ephesians.

Open our eyes so we might see great and mighty things which You have promised Your people.

In Jesus’ name we commit ourselves to sitting at Your feet and learning from You this morning Father God.

Amen.

* *

*Ephesians 1:4-6*

If you have your Bible with you, please turn to the book of Ephesians and we will read chapter 1 and verses 4 through 6.

If you don’t, please turn to the back page of your bulletin where all of this mornings Scripture is printed out for you.

Beginning at verse 4: /“just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him.

In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.

” /

One of the saddest feelings in the world is the feeling that your life is going nowhere.

You're alive.

But you feel like there is no point in being alive.

You get a little daydream--a little flicker--of what it might be like to be a part of something really great and really valuable, and what it might be like to have a significant part in it.

But then you wake up and everything looks so small and insignificant and pitiful and out of the way and unknown and pointless.

You feel like you don’t belong.

We were not made to live without a destiny.

We were made to be sustained by a meaningful purpose.

We were made by God to have a future.

Jeremiah 29:11 says, /“For I know the thoughts that I think toward you says the Lord, thoughts of peace and not of evil, to give you a future and a hope.”

/We were made to be strengthened each day by this assurance, this confidence: that what is happening in our lives today, no matter how mundane and ordinary is a really significant step toward something great and good and beautiful tomorrow.

God wants to show us great and mighty things.

God wants to give us a future, a hope!

When that connection breaks down--between my present life and a great and good and beautiful destiny that God has for me -- I have three choices: \\ 1) I can kill myself; or \\ 2) I can numb myself (with alcohol or drugs or television or pornography or romance novels or computers or frantic work or frantic play); or \\ 3) I can seek to reestablish the connection with God by finding what my true destiny really is.

Jeremiah 29:13 says, “And you will seek Me, and find Me, when you search for Me with all your heart.”

In “Kingdoms in Conflict”, Chuck Colson tells this true story: “In a Nazi concentration camp in Hungary during the second world war prisoners were forced to do nauseating work in a sewage plant.

But it was work; and something was accomplished.

Then the plant was destroyed by allied bombers.

So the Nazi officers arranged for the prisoners to shovel sand into carts and drag it to the other end of the plant and dump it.

The next day they ordered them to shovel it back into the carts and bring it to where they started.

And so it went for days.

Finally one old man began crying uncontrollably; the guards hauled him away.

Another screamed until he was beaten into silence.

Then a young man who had survived three years in the camp darted away from the group.

The guards shouted for him to stop as he ran toward the electrified fence.

The other prisoners cried out, but it was too late; there was a blinding flash and a terrible sizzling noise as smoke puffed from his smoldering flesh.

In the days that followed, dozens of the prisoners went mad and ran from their work only to be shot by guards or electrocuted by the fence.”

We were made to be sustained by a purposeful future.

We were made to live in the assurance of a significant destiny.

Without the prospect of a significant future, we lose hope.

Our hope is in the Lord and the destiny He has for us.

I use the word destiny simply to connect this tremendous cry for purpose of the human heart with the word predestination in today's text, Ephesians 1:5.

We focused last week on verse 4: /"God chose us in him before the foundation of the world."/

A beautiful thought to know we are chosen by the Lord of creation, the only true God, to be in His family.

This week we  will continue to examine verse 4 and take up verse 5: /"God predestined us to sonship through Jesus Christ for himself according to the good pleasure of his will."/

I want to establish in your hearts this morning--you who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and count him your Master and Savior and Hope--I want to establish in your hearts an assured destiny, a great and good and beautiful future, so that you don't ever have to sob over empty days or scream over futility or throw yourself on the wires because there is no future worth living for.

And the way I want to establish this destiny in your heart and make it firm is by showing you two things in this text: the goal of your destiny, and the ground of your destiny.

1.

First, let's focus our attention on the goal of our destiny.

What are we destined for?

Verse 5 gives part of the answer/: "God predestined us for sonship."

/Our destiny from before the creation of the world was to become the children of God.

Isn’t that amazing!

It never cease to amaze me that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Moses, now wants me to be counted in that league of patriarchs.

When God chose you, he had a purpose, and so he predestined that purpose to come about, first that you would become a child of God.

That you would be part of his family.

You entered that family at your second birth as Jesus described to Nicodemus in John 3, verse 3. Jesus said “….

Unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God … In John 1:12 we are told’ “But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe  in His name.”

We are to believe and receive.

Do not say to me, “I believe”, for I will say to you, “Even the demons believe.”

God says you must also receive Jesus as your Lord and Savior.

He is the Way, the truth, and the life described in John 14:6.

Have you done that?

Can you honestly say this morning.

“Yes, I am a child of God.

I have received Him into my heart and life!.

If you have any doubts at all, now is the day of salvation.

Bow before the King of Kings and submit your life to Him.

Then, and only then, will you become an heir of all that God owns and begin to be blessed with every spiritual blessing mentioned in verse 3.

*So, to reiterate, the first purpose of predestination is to make you a child of God so you can be lavished with every spiritual blessing *(v.3).

But what are spiritual blessings, you may wonder.

I’ll save that for another sermon.

Suffice it to say at this time that spiritual blessings are the work of the Trinity: God blesses believers because of the Father’s electing, the Son’s dying, and the Spirit’s sealing.

Spiritual blessings begin with and are based on our election by God.

(*He chose us*) God is the subject and believers are the object.

And God’s object is to bless us.

Blessing is God’s work just like salvation is God’s doing, not man’s.

It is an act of grace, based on His will.

You and I are responsible to believe and receive, but “God chose you to be saved.

He chose you before you chose Him!

As the old hymn says, “He sought you and bought you with His redeeming blood.’

You relented, then repented; relented from going the way of the world, then repented and turned to God’s way.

This was achieved through belief in the truth” and receipt of His Son’s work on the cross.

God the Father loves us that much!

We get to choose to stop running, to repent, and to submit to God’s touch of grace.

Whether you were dragged kicking and screaming, or submitted gently, you are now a child of God because He wanted you to be His, and because He wants to bless you by growing you into His likeness.

*In Him* indicates another purpose of election.

The first purpose is to become His child.

The second purpose of election is believers will *be holy and blameless in His sight* for eternity.

What God has begun in the past will be accomplished and completed in the future.

Christians are “holy”, that is, set apart to God.

I’ll say more about this later.

In addition, the purpose of His election is to make Christians “blameless.”